


Twenty-Five Days 'Til Christmas

by merriman



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Advent Calendar, Christmas, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:31:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An advent calendar of Christmas festivities for Mako and Raleigh as they settle into life after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty-Five Days 'Til Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaverickSawyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaverickSawyer/gifts).



> Thank you to my wonderful beta.

**December 1st:**  
"We always got these calendars when I was a kid," Raleigh told Mako as he handed her a flat paper bag. He went to hang up his coat and when he returned he found her pulling the calendars out of the bag and inspecting them.

"We had a special one but it's probably in a box somewhere in storage. See, you open a door every day of the month," he said, taking one she'd set aside.

"I know," she said, smiling up at him. "I had one every year as well, after…" Her smile turned sad for a moment, then brightened. "Sensei, he had one with wooden pieces. He told me his mother gave it to him and his sister. Tamsin opened it with me, the first year. Every piece was a little animal and I would play with them. I had not thought about it in years."

"Well, I bought a bunch of these cheap ones. I figured we could each pick one, you know?" Raleigh peeled the plastic wrapping off of the advent calendar. "We can always look for the others later."

After dinner they looked through the calendars and ended up picking out two each, with pictures and chocolates and little plastic Jaegers behind the doors.

 

**December 2nd:**  
Fake Christmas trees had gone somewhat out of fashion during the Kaiju war. The metal was needed for other things and people had taken to decorating other trees in their yards or cutting their own where they could. Real trees that could be replanted were in vogue for a while. But less than a year out of the war you could find any kind of tree you wanted.

They had been out for dinner, meeting with the Chois while they were in town. On their way back home they walked past window displays full of synthetic trees covered in blue tinsel, each decorated to mimic the coloring of a Kaiju. Neither of them looked at the trees in the windows but when they were past the store they turned to each other.

"We should get a real tree," Raleigh suggested.

Mako nodded. "We should," she agreed. "I will make ornaments."

And so they made a detour on their way home, stopping at a lot that sold trees and purchasing a small one in a large pot.

 

**December 3rd:**  
As it turned out, Mako didn't need to make ornaments (though she made a few anyhow) - so many people had gifted ornaments and they hadn't realized it until they took them all out.

"It is a good thing we got a tree," Mako commented as she looked over the amassed baubles on the table. "Otherwise where would we put all of these?"

She held up a tiny replica of Romeo Blue and Raleigh took it from her to hang it on the tree near a globe covered in glitter that was already shedding onto the floor.

"We'd have to hang them from the ceiling or something," Raleigh said. "You know. We might need a bigger tree. Or another tree."

In addition to all the ornaments they'd been given he had managed to find a small box with a few from his childhood. For whatever reason, he and Yancy had kept them even after going to the Academy. They'd put them out in their room in the Icebox and he remembered a year when Jazmine had visited, bringing a few more as well as some other odds and ends from their mother's things. 

Raleigh picked up a little metal robot ornament that had been one of his special ones when he was a boy. He handed it to Mako. "You hang this one."

 

**December 4th:**  
A few houses had put up decorations right away at the end of November. A few more followed in the next day or two and by the middle of the first week of December many of the houses on their block had at least a few lights up. No one had anything too ostentatious. Everyone was used to the deprivations of living through a war, which had included limits on power usage. You could get away with some LED candles, or real ones if you wanted to risk the flames. You could put out things that didn't draw any power. So that's what people did first.

Raleigh considered buying more lights than they really needed. Mako was with him when he picked up a huge box of lights that could have run all the way across their roof. He glanced at her, looked at the lights again, back to her. He put the lights down and picked up a couple of candles instead.

"We'll keep it modest," he promised her. "People would think we were bragging if we went too bright."

"Well," she said as they went to check out. "We did save the world."

 

**December 5th:**  
Raleigh got home one afternoon to find Mako curled up on the couch, cup of tea forgotten on the table in front of her while she watched television.

"Have you never seen this before?" he asked, sitting next to her to watch _It's A Wonderful Life_.

"Oh no," she said. "I have seen it many times. But I can never change away from it. If I see it, I must finish it."

Raleigh stretched out on the couch, letting Mako relax against him. They laughed together as George and Mary fell into the pool and continued to dance. They winced together as Uncle Billy left the money at the bank to be stolen by Old Man Potter. When the movie was over, Raleigh pulled up his personal files and dug through them to find a movie he hadn't watched in years.

"Seen this one?" he asked as _The Muppet Christmas Carol_ started on the screen. Mako shook her head and Raleigh got up to reheat her tea and make some for himself. 

 

**December 6th:**  
"Are we truly going to mail cards to people?" Mako asked as Raleigh pulled up the most up-to-date list of addresses they had for their friends. After the war they'd started out clustered together, unsure of how to live apart from the PPDC as a whole. But eventually people had drifted off, going to live near family or start a new life somewhere. Which is what Mako and Raleigh had done, purchasing a house a little outside a city near the coast, just because they could.

"Yup," Raleigh said, handing her a pile of envelopes. "When I was a kid, my mom made me and Yancy and Jazmine lick stamps for the Christmas cards she sent out. Always thought the taste of glue was a Christmas thing."

Mako laughed and peeled stamps off the roll Raleigh had bought, much to the amusement of the postal clerk.

"Tamsin liked to write letters," she told him as she stuck stamps to the envelopes and he addressed them. "I was still learning English when she would write to me, and she would write little stories so I could learn. She said I would learn better with words on a page and not on a screen."

Like a memory of his own, Raleigh saw the letters, saw a woman in a hospital bed and knew she had written them. Saw the letters bundled up and tied together.

"You still have them," he said, smiling at Mako. She nodded and smiled back.

 

**December 7th:**  
It snowed early that year. Raleigh had thought once that perhaps he'd had his fill of snow, living in Alaska, but watching it fall outside their windows made him smile all the same, especially with the lights and the tree and all. 

The next morning, when he went to mail their cards, the outside was coated in snow, just enough to make everything look nice and for the kids to play with. When he got home Mako was outside, rolling up the last ball for a snowman for a neighbor's child. 

Raleigh grinned to himself and crouched to pick up a handful of snow. He packed it loosely, and lobbed it towards Mako, who turned and batted it away as if she'd expected it. And she probably had. She made a snowball herself and threw it at him and before long the neighbors had joined in, making it a block-wide event. 

They were soaked and cold by the time they finally headed inside, but that just made warming up that much nicer.

 

**December 8th:**  
"Don't look!" Mako insisted, covering the pad of paper she'd been writing on when Raleigh came into the kitchen looking for coffee and more coffee.

"I'm not looking!" he promised. "What is that, anyhow?"

"A list of presents, and yours is on it," she told him.

"Oh! Well, maybe I'll try to sneak a peek…"

Mako shoved him away and turned the pad over before he could see it.

"I will tear it into bits and swallow it once I have bought everything," she warned. "And you will never find my hiding places."

 

**December 9th:**  
There were four large packages waiting outside their door when Mako got home one afternoon. Three were addressed to Raleigh and one to the both of them. She brought them all inside, steadfastly refusing to spend much thought on what might be inside the ones for Raleigh. To distract herself she opened the one with her name on it and smiled as she found it full of candy. 

"Where did all of that come from?" Raleigh asked as he came up behind her.

Mako handed Raleigh a card and picked out a chocolate-covered candy cane for him. "Herc Hansen," she said as she dug through the candy and found herself some orange and chocolate truffles. "He used to give me and Chuck candy canes when we were little. I could make mine last all day if I was careful."

Raleigh grinned as he unwrapped the candy cane and stuck it in his mouth before moving his own packages down to the basement.

 

**December 10th:**  
"You piloted a Jaeger!" Raleigh reminded Mako as she took her first tentative lengths on brand new skates. A frozen-over pond in the next town over had been cleared just for skating and Raleigh had insisted.

"This is not like piloting a Jaeger," Mako pointed out. "Though if we were in the drift, perhaps I would pick it up better."

But she was already picking it up, moving with more assurance and growing steadier on the blades of her skates. There was definitely something to be said for a lifetime of physical training, as well as the lingering effects of drifting with someone who already had the necessary skills. They'd participated in a study on post-drift effects but the results had been vague at best. Not that they needed it to know that there would always be a shared connection.

Raleigh skated up next to Mako, pushing off from one foot, then the other, the two of them moving in sync across the ice.

 

**December 11th:**  
"So…" Mako said the next morning over breakfast. "Were those big boxes all presents?"

Raleigh laughed. "Wouldn't you like to know!"

Mako made a face at him and went back to her tea. 

"As a matter of fact, no," he said, relenting. "None of them were. They were from the storage place up in Anchorage. I had them send me anything already boxed up. I'll have to go up and clean out the rest myself some time next month I guess."

"Did you unpack them?" she asked.

"Not yet," he sighed. "Look, it's just old stuff from the Icebox."

But he didn't argue when she brought one of the boxes up from the basement and opened it. Inside was a bizarre assortment of clothing, books, bits and pieces, and two photo albums.

As Mako carefully looked through the photo albums Raleigh took out the books, stopping when he found one with a grumpy-looking Santa Claus on the cover. Mako looked over and laughed.

"I had that one! Tamsin gave it to me and every year Sensei would tell me 'Merry Bloomin' Christmas.'"

They both abandoned the box, though Raleigh would go back for the albums later, and sat to look through the book together.

 

**December 12th:**  
Mako had to cajole Raleigh into coming to the mall with her to do some shopping. He had memories of malls from his childhood, before the war, and mostly what he remembered was the noise and the crowds, but that wasn't at all what he found when they walked in.

During the war the malls had been repurposed as housing for some, necessary shopping for others. They had become communities in their own right, almost like the Shatterdomes, but without the Jaegers and PPDC uniforms everywhere.

People had set up stalls in front of their homes in the residential areas and there was a big open space where musicians were playing. A crowd of listeners were eating snacks from what was obviously still a communal mess hall that had once been the food court. 

"Not all of them are like this," Mako told him as they paid for a scarf for Tendo's wife. "But I saw many when I was traveling for the PPDC. People come together. It is how we survive."

 

**December 13th:**  
Overnight the snow had blanketed the neighborhood once more, cleaning up the dirty snow that had been turning into slush on the streets. With a fresh coat the hill at the end of the street became a perfect place for the children in the neighborhood to go sledding.

"One year, when I was maybe, oh, I dunno, eight?" Raleigh said as they trudged up the hill, sled carried between them, "I convinced Yancy and Jazmine we should go sledding even though the hill near us was too steep and it was mostly ice and I don't know what the hell I was thinking but there we were, with no sleds, just pieces of cardboard, shooting down this icy slope. My mom almost killed us herself when she found out. Jaz was only five but I think she had more fun than me and Yancy combined."

Raleigh smiled at Mako, who shook her head in disbelief before setting the sled down at the top of the hill.

"I will ask her about this when she arrives tomorrow," Mako warned as they climbed onto the sled.

"Go ahead! She probably doesn't remember!" Raleigh said before sending them speeding down the hill.

 

**December 14th:**  
"Of course I remember," Jazmine said when Mako asked her the next day. She'd arrived that morning, leaving her things in the guest room and promising Mako that she would take over all of the cooking duties for the rest of the season.

"Everyone always thought the Becket Boys were the adrenaline junkies," she continued as she made a mess of the kitchen. Mako sat at the counter, looking over the recipes Jazmine had brought with her. There had to be at least ten different cookie recipes alone, and two cakes. And that didn't even touch on the meals she'd mentioned planning.

"But you were too?" Mako asked, smiling at Raleigh's sister. Jazmine grinned back, for a moment looking so much like the memories Raleigh had of Yancy that Mako had to take a deep breath. Jazmine didn't seem to notice.

"Oh, of course." Jazmine turned off the mixer and scooped the dough out onto some waxed paper to roll it flat. As she worked she laughed a little. "I was a speed demon when I learned how to drive. You know I applied to the Academy? But they never found me a drift partner and I ended up busy anyhow. Here, come cut these out with me." She handed Mako a cookie cutter in the shape of a little man.

By the time Raleigh got home with the groceries Jaz had sent him out for, the first batch of gingerbread men were out of the oven and cooling on a rack on the counter. He stole one and broke it in half, feeding some to Mako before finishing the rest.

"Stop it," Jazmine said, smacking his hand with the roll of waxed paper. "We won't have any left to decorate.

 

**December 15th:**  
Even a year out of the war there were plenty of things most people couldn't get. For Mako and Raleigh it was easier. They had lots of connections all over the world and a fair number of government officials still looking to gain their favor, so it wasn't exactly a shock when delicacies started showing up in the mail. Jazmine had taken stock of their pantry when she'd arrived and started making menus. Her second night with them, she used two jars of chestnuts to make a soup. Raleigh couldn't remember who'd sent them, only that he and Mako definitely hadn't bought them.

"Doesn't matter," Jazmine said. "But they won't keep forever, so better to use them than not."

She dished up the soup and they ate their fill, warmed by the thick broth. When they were done they packed up the leftovers and put them away. The pantry was still mostly full and Mako and Raleigh considered it.

"You had special things planned?" Raleigh asked his sister.

Jazmine nodded. "Yeah, but you know there's plenty we could spare here."

Together, Mako, Raleigh and Jazmine picked out special treats from the things they had never asked for and made baskets of gifts for all the neighbors.

 

**December 16th:**  
The plan had been to make a gingerbread house. Jazmine had made a huge batch of dough and plenty of icing to glue the bits together. But with two Jaeger pilots in the house, one of whom had run a Jaeger restoration, that plan was never going to stick.

There was icing everywhere and Jazmine had been called upon to go out and get more red candies and figure out how to melt them down to make a circular panel. She'd done that, then made herself a mug of cocoa and watched as Mako and Raleigh built their Jaeger out of gingerbread.

It was two feet tall by the time they were done and probably not strictly accurate. But they had stuck two little gingerbread people into the head and the red candy panel in the chest looked fantastic, if Jazmine did say so herself.

After putting the finishing touches on with the icing, they all stepped back to look at it.

"We should put it in the window," Jazmine suggested. When Mako and Raleigh turned to look at her she shrugged. "What? It's not like you can actually pilot it. It's a cookie."

 

**December 17th:**  
"Is this the right address?" Raleigh asked Mako, who had brought the invitation with her. 

Mako nodded and stepped up to the door, knocking and waiting when she heard people inside the apartment. 

When the door opened they were met by the familiar faces of several crewmembers from the Hong Kong Shatterdome as well as a number of people they didn't know. They were welcomed in with hugs and handshakes and someone took the box of cookies Jazmine had sent and someone else took their coats and before they knew it they'd been at the party for an hour and everyone was telling stories about various holiday celebrations in the domes they'd lived in through the war.

"Hey, remember that paper chain?" one of the other guests said, turning to their host. 

"Of course," he said, smiling. "I've still got my piece."

Mako tilted her head. "Your piece?"

Their host nodded and got up. "I'll go get it. Be right back." He headed off towards the back of the apartment. The guest who'd brought it up turned to the rest of the party.

"See, this school set up this pen-pal thing with the LA dome when we were there. Matched us with a kid who'd write us letters. It was cute and we got like, a letter a month, maybe a card or some candy. We'd send back souvenirs from the dome. You know kids loved that stuff. And then Christmas hits and we get these boxes full of paper chains. And they're numbered. There must have been over ten thousand little paper links, all chained together. And every one of them had something written on it. A kid's name, a picture of a Jaeger. Thank you. Stuff like that. We hung it up in the mess and when we closed down we portioned it out. Everyone got a piece."

Their host returned, carrying a box. He sat back down and opened it, carefully removing a section of paper chain about 40 links long. 

"I brought it with me to Hong Kong," he said as he passed it around. "I couldn't leave it behind."

 

**December 18th:**  
When they had moved into the neighborhood, Mako and Raleigh had spent a few months trying to play down their fame. It hadn't been easy. Everyone knew who they were. Everyone wanted to thank them or question them or tell them some story about a friend or family member who'd been affected by the war. Finally, they had accepted it and eventually it had died down.

Really, they hadn't been expecting any special notice that Christmas. They'd been out and about, decorating, shopping, sledding. No one had seemed to take any extra note of them. Until one evening when they were done with dinner and had been ready to sit and maybe watch a movie or play cards. 

A knock on the door was unremarkable enough, but when they opened it they found almost all of the families from their street clustered together on their front walk. The group burst into song when Mako and Raleigh stood together in the doorway, Jazmine right behind them. They sang three songs before pausing and Jazmine had gone and gotten cookies for the kids and Raleigh and Mako went outside to meet everyone.

"Have you gone all around the neighborhood?" Mako asked. 

Everyone in the group shook their heads. 

"No," one of them said. "We came to you first. We've been practicing for a month."

Mako gave him a little bow. "Thank you," she told him. "If you are planning on continuing, we would be honored to join you. If you will have us."

The neighbors didn't even bother to confer. They cheered and as soon as everyone had finished their cookies and Mako, Raleigh and Jazmine had grabbed their coats, they were off to go caroling to the streets beyond their own.

 

**December 19th:**  
Mako had wrapped all of her presents for Raleigh early and hidden them and Raleigh had wrapped what he'd gotten for her late one night while she'd been busy, but they still had quite a few things for friends. Raleigh handed Mako the paper he'd bought and she started laughing.

"I cannot believe these sometimes," she said, looking at the roll of paper covered in tiny Jaegers festooned in with lights.

"At least I didn't get the one with snow Kaiju," Raleigh pointed out.

"Snow Kaiju," Mako said slowly. "I see."

Raleigh nodded. "When I was a kid we made our own."

"You used to draw on it," Mako said, nodding as she started to measure out the paper she needed against some of the presents she had. "I saw that, with Yancy and Jazmine and your mother and father. You did it together." 

Mako paused and considered the paper. "Would you like to do that again?"

They hadn't cut anything or wrapped any presents yet. They could do it on the reverse of the paper he'd bought. But Raleigh shook his head.

"Maybe next year."

 

**December 20th:**  
With everything wrapped, Mako carefully placed her presents under their tree. Raleigh and Jazmine added theirs and soon there was no space left. They'd mixed them up so no one pile was from a single person. They made it feel like Christmas was around the corner, which, of course, it was.

Mako caught Raleigh eyeing the presents, idly checking labels to see if he could find his own.

"I wasn't going to peek!" he insisted.

"Of course not," Mako said, drawing his hand away from the package he'd been looking at. "Because you never shook your presents."

But a few hours later Raleigh walked in on Mako carefully looking through the gifts for her name.

"Well, I know _someone_ who used to shake her presents, and it wasn't Jazmine," Raleigh said as Mako smiled sheepishly.

 

**December 21st:**  
It had snowed off and on all month, always keeping enough on the lawns that the neighborhood kids continued to have snowball fights and build little forts and snowmen. Fortunately either their parents had warned them not to make any snow Kaiju or they just weren't interested (or they destroyed them before Mako or Raleigh ever saw). 

Raleigh looked out the window and watched the kids outside, playing before the sun went down on the shortest day of the year.

"You know, it's the solstice," he said when Mako joined him at the window.

"I know," she said, nodding. "The shortest day. From now on it will get longer and longer until the summer."

"Do we have any candles?"

It was a silly question. Everyone had candles. They were the sort of thing people had stockpiled during the war, when power outages were common. But Mako and Raleigh had only lived there a year, and the war had been over when they'd moved in. Still, it was like the house had come pre-stocked with them. Mako found a few and brought them out to where Raleigh had started to make snowballs.

"You make lanterns with them," Raleigh said as he took a candle from Mako and carefully placed it inside a little pyramid of snowballs on their front stoop. He lit it with the long matches she'd brought out, then placed one final snowball on top. The light from the candle glowed from inside the snow, seeming to make the snow itself light up.

Mako watched the candle flame flicker for a few moments, then looked at Raleigh. He smiled and held out his hand and together they went next door, then to the house beyond that, leaving a lantern in front of each home to bring light to the longest night of the year.

 

**December 22nd:**  
Raleigh had spent the day at home while Mako and Jazmine went shopping. When they returned they had some special things for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Raleigh helped them unpack their bags and put things away, or just put them out.

"What are these?" he asked, pulling out a box full of foil-wrapped tubes. Almost immediately he had his answer through a distant memory of Mako's and had to sit down, it made him laugh so hard.

"Crackers," Mako said, and he knew from her smile that she could tell what memory he had seen in her head. It was a little sad still, remembering bits and pieces of Stacker Pentecost raising Mako, but mostly this one was just funny.

Pentecost had opened his cracker, snapping the little noisemaker with Mako, then pulling out the toy and joke inside. When he'd left the crown in the tube Mako had protested, her own blue tissue crown proudly perched on her head. Pentecost had relented, just for her, taking out a red one and wearing it for the rest of the day.

 

**December 23rd:**  
Some days it was strange, not having a crowd around. Even when Raleigh had been working on the Wall, following the job, he'd lived in dorms and shared rooms with other workers, always conserving space, always packed in together. The Shatterdomes and the Academy before them had been the same, with cadets and crew and pilots and researchers and officers all underfoot. 

But Raleigh made use of the time alone. There was always something that needed doing around the house and he had a couple of special projects to finish. When they were done he cornered Mako in the kitchen while she put away leftovers from their dinner.

"I made something," he told her. "Now, if you don't like it, I'll understand. I was never great at making stuff." He handed her a lumpy package.

Mako peeled off the paper and shook out the stocking he'd knitted for her in the moments when he'd been alone.

"It's perfect," she pronounced, firmly ignoring the uneven stitching and awkward heel. "I will hang it tomorrow night.

 

**December 24th:**  
Jazmine had gone up to the guest room early, saying she wanted to sleep so Santa would come. Mako and Raleigh had smiled and stayed downstairs in front of the fire they'd built. It felt cozy and warm and perfect. The stockings were hung and they had stuffed them full of toys and tools and fruit for each other. 

They didn't always need to talk. Sometimes it was just a holdover from the drift, knowing what the other was thinking or feeling. Sometimes it was just a comfortable silence between two people who'd spent time in each other's heads.

Raleigh waited until the clock ticked over to midnight before pulling a small box out of his pocket and handing it to Mako.

She took it without a word, smiling as she opened it and saw the ring inside, gold in the shape of a sword, curved to fit around her finger. A single sapphire sat on its hilt. It fit perfectly and after Mako put it on she leaned over and kissed Raleigh.

"Of course," she told him. "Merry Christmas."

 

**December 25th:**  
Christmas morning dawned and only Jazmine got up early, making pancakes and cocoa and starting the day's cooking for when their guests would arrive later. Mako and Raleigh followed an hour or so after, looking happy and relaxed and Jazmine spied the ring on Mako's finger right away and welcomed her to the family with a cookie and a hug.

Presents were opened with carols playing in the background and after they'd gotten everything cleaned up and put away their friends started to knock at the door. First were the Chois, Tendo looking dapper as ever. Newt Geiszler had emailed to say he'd be late due to "pressing research", but Hermann Gottlieb and his wife arrived not long after the Chois and Raleigh headed out a little after that to meet Herc, who'd come to town specially for them. Some of the crew from the Icebox showed up and two of Mako's restoration team were right on their heels. If Christmas was a time for family then they were well-surrounded by the people who'd taken care of them and helped them win the war.

The crowd was too big to sit around a table, so everyone sat where they could, eating and laughing and catching up. Raleigh made a point of sitting next to Herc, getting him to talk about how he'd been overseeing the refit of the Sydney dome as a museum and school. Mako was deep in conversation with her former teammates, talking technical specs on a project they'd been working on remotely for months.

When the food was finished and people started to mingle some more, Mako found Raleigh by the tree. Their hands touched without a word between them, fingers clasping effortlessly. Raleigh rested his head against Mako's and together they watched their friends.

"You know, Pentecost would've made a toast or something. Can't help thinking I don't measure up," Raleigh said softly.

"You measure up," Mako assured him. "This is a wonderful Christmas. Thank you for sharing it with me."


End file.
